


It's Not Much, but My Money's on You

by Pythia (melancholic_pigeon)



Series: Fate or Something Better [9]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, F/M, Gen, I'm pretty sure the violence isn't graphic enough to warrant an archive warning, International Fanworks Day 2021, Platonic Hurt/Comfort, also this stands alone from the rest of the series, but I wanted to err on the side of caution, if you go looking for it in the other fics you will be disappointed, in which Sally Jackson is extremely pregnant, the percabeth is endgame in this fic but not in the overall series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29476947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melancholic_pigeon/pseuds/Pythia
Summary: Her face is red and puffy, her wide shoulders trembling. She looks, for the first time Percy's ever seen, scared half out of her mind. Vulnerable.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Clarisse La Rue/Chris Rodriguez, Percy Jackson & Clarisse La Rue
Series: Fate or Something Better [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/453601
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44





	It's Not Much, but My Money's on You

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings in the tags, because in this case they're the same as the summary/themes.
> 
> I hope this counts. I finished it on an impulse. My writer brain is the only part of me that seems to be online??? IDK GUYS, I'M FLAPPING IN THE WIND 
> 
> This one is heavy, folks.

_February 13th, 2010, 11:56 PM_

_—_

It's almost midnight, and Percy's about thirty seconds from passing out when his phone chimes, alerting him to a new text. 

_ >buzz me up _

_ >its fukin cold out here _

_ >i got ur # from silena a wile ago _

That's weird. Whoever it is isn't in his contacts, but it's clearly someone he knows, and that sets off an anxious twisting in his stomach.

Something's not right.

He gets out of bed and makes his way to the intercom. A few minutes later, there's a series of hard raps on the door.

He unlocks the deadbolt and pulls it open. On the other side, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder and her cheek a brilliant, swollen blue-purple, is Clarisse.

Percy steps back to let her in. She passes him, wincing as her arm brushes his, and sinks down onto the floor like she can't hold herself up. He follows, putting them at eye level with each other.

Her face is red and puffy, her wide shoulders trembling. She looks, for the first time Percy's ever seen, scared half out of her mind. Vulnerable. 

"I didn't know where else to go," she says eventually, hoarse. She can't seem to meet his eyes. "Nobody else knows. Not even Chris."

"Because you don't want them to worry." 

She doesn't respond, just slumps a little and keeps staring at the floor, which tells him he was right. 

"I hit back," she mutters. "I just...lost it. He shoved me and I—" She curls her hand into a fist, her jaw just as tight. "I had enough. I went berserk and slugged him in the mouth."

It sticks somewhere in Percy's throat. He hears it in his own voice, back when he was still a kid, still getting smacked around and fighting back as hard as he could, no matter how many times he lost. He'd had that same bitter hopelessness back then; the feeling that no matter what you did, nothing would ever get better, so you might as well go down kicking and screaming. 

"Which is how you got that shiner, I'm guessing." 

She falls silent again. Percy's never seen her cry, and from the way she's glaring a hole in the floor, it's taking a lot of work to keep it that way. 

"Alright, then," he says, careful to keep his voice even. "First, ice. For your face, your arm and anywhere else you're not telling me about." 

She shoots him a dull glare. It's exhausted and wan, nothing like her usual fiercely intense energy, but she pushes to her feet. (Winces again when she puts weight on her hand, which Percy files away for later, swallowing down the angry bile.) 

The passivity is terrifying. 

She lets him take her coat and bag, lead her into the kitchen, sit her down at the breakfast table and pour her a glass of water. She drinks without protest as he rummages through the freezer for a bag of peas and wraps it in a towel, and she even lets him sit next to her and put it on her wrist. Grimaces with a sharp inhale, but still doesn't say a word.

"Do you think it's broken?" 

Clarisse shakes her head, pushes aside the peas and rolls up her sleeve so he can see. Swollen and badly bruised like her face, but no scary angles or dislocations. 

"Everything else is superficial."

He puts the peas back once she pulls down her sleeve. "If you're lying, I'll figure it out." 

"You're better at that than I gave you credit for." 

He's not sure how to respond to that. Once upon a time, he would have been floored if he'd believed her at all. Then he saw her flinch as her dad stepped threateningly toward her, just like his mother had when Smelly Gabe raised a meaty hand, and his anger reversed direction in an instant. 

He may not know what to say, but he's _very_ sure what he has to do.

"I have one rule. You respect my parents while you're here, or we're gonna have serious words." 

"Jackson, I would legitimately kill someone for your mother." She smiles grimly at him. "Your stepdad's not so bad either." 

"Not this one, anyway. The first one was, but he's dead now, so fuck him." 

She barely even reacts. He recognized it in her; it stands to reason she'd recognize it in him, too. She slumps against the wall, shifting the peas to her cheek with a hiss. 

"If he's anything like my dad, I hope he's rotting in hell."

"If there's any justice in the universe, he's spending eternity playing poker in a vat of boiling magma and losing every stupid game." 

It makes her laugh weakly, the first time Percy's ever heard her do so without a disdainful sneer. 

"One can dream." 

He manages to coax some reheated lasagna into her— _your mom is a kitchen witch; how is this better than any shit I've gotten in a restaurant?—_ and talk her into taking off her boots. She resists him on waking his parents, though, and he's reminded that she's as stubborn as he is. 

"Bugging you is one thing. Your mother needs all the sleep she can get while she still has a chance." 

"She'll be a lot more upset if she wakes up tomorrow and finds out you've been here all night." 

"Upset, but slightly more rested. I'll let her fuss as much as she wants, to make up for it."

"You know, it might be a moot point. She has a radar for that sort of thing." 

"I do. Finely honed from a great deal of experience. I was awake anyway, though."

Clarisse jumps out of her skin, and Percy's right there with her. 

His mom is leaning against the doorway, her hair braided for sleep, wearing one of Percy's baggiest shirts because she's run out of night clothes that fit. She makes her way into the living room and carefully lowers herself next to Clarisse on the couch, a sadness in her eyes Percy hasn't seen since he was twelve. 

"Honey, I'm so sorry." She speaks with that same soft, gentle tone she used to use with him when he was the one hurting. "You can stay as long as you need to. You're safe here." 

Clarisse breaks, falling forward with her head in her hands. Seeing her in tears is exactly as disturbing as Percy thought it would be. 

You can tell she doesn't do it often, from the panicked gasping. Probably had it beaten out of her. Percy's vision goes red, and his mom seems to notice, catching his eye and mouthing _tea_ as she puts a hand on Clarisse's heaving back.

He takes the hint and heads back into the kitchen, picking out a box with a dragon on the front that he remembers her making for him after stressful nights. Five minutes, three mugs, a narrowly-avoided boiling water disaster and a belatedly-acquired tray later, he re-enters the living room to find Clarisse blowing her nose and tossing the tissue into a wastebasket already half-overflowing. 

A moment later, his mom takes hold of Clarisse's good hand and flattens it against her side. 

Percy's done it too. He knows exactly what's making her light up like that, sudden and joyous: a tiny foot responding to pressure and movement and the sound of a new voice. 

"That's _so cool._ " 

"Very cool," he agrees, setting the tray down on the coffee table. "I wish the tadpole would save kickboxing practice for times when our mother isn't trying to sleep, though." 

His mother gives him an indulgent look, shifting Clarisse's hand to a different spot. 

"Sweetie, if it weren't the kickboxing, it'd be the back pain, the boob pain, the ankle pain, the neck pain, the indigestion, the nausea, the kid-laying-directly-on-my-bladder thing or the total inability to find a position that doesn't make any of that worse." 

Every so often, Percy remembers what a giant baby he'd been— nearly ten pounds at birth— and finds himself feeling unreasonably guilty about the discomfort he must have caused her. His impending sibling isn't taking up quite that much space, but they won't find out how big its noggin is for a few weeks yet, and that's the real hurdle. 

"You know, Sally, I can probably help with some of that." Clarisse leans back against the couch. "I'm pretty good with musculoskeletal stuff. Gonna get my degree in physiology."

"It's kind of you to offer, but it won't be much longer." She shifts her weight, then grimaces at the movement. "I might take you up on it if my darling passenger decides to be fashionably late like the first one." 

Apparently and somewhat bafflingly, Clarisse is a huge, _huge_ baby person, the way some people go nuts over cats or dogs. She listens to the stories with rapt attention, melts and awws at all the right places, and by the time they've wound down a little she's actually looking...well, happy.

Percy waits for a lull in the conversation and pounces on the relaxed atmosphere, his mug half-empty.

"I'm going to crash out here. You can have my room for now. We'll figure out a more permanent solution later." 

He doesn't want her to aggravate any of her wounds on too narrow a surface, and he has a feeling she could use a door between herself and the rest of the world for a little bit, but he doesn't say it out loud. Before tonight, he'd have been afraid she'd sock him for it, but now he's a lot more concerned she'll start crying again. 

His mom insists on making up his bed for her, saying she'll be just as sore sitting still as she would be changing out sheets. She comes back out when they're wrestling with a pile of blankets, gives them each a kiss on the cheek and heads off to bed again, leaving a sense of coziness and stability in her wake.

It's bizarre, having Clarisse voluntarily doing something for his benefit, even something as small as helping him make up the couch for himself.

"I'm only going to say this once, so just let me say it." 

For a minute, she stays silent. Percy, as she asked, keeps his mouth shut. 

"I came to you because I knew you'd do this." She's half-mumbling, and won't meet his eyes. "You do it with everyone. It doesn't matter that I treated you like—" 

She grits her teeth, the line of her back rigid. Percy forces himself not to interrupt her. She breathes out through her nose, then looks over at him. 

"It wasn't okay, but it doesn't matter. I knew you'd help me anyway." 

She opens her mouth as though she wants to say something else. Then she shakes her head, apparently thinking better of it.

Pig brown, he'd snootily called the color of her eyes when they first met. He's not sure what to call that shade now, but there's a lot more depth to it than he'd noticed when she was trying to shove his head in a toilet. 

Which, honestly, is kind of appropriate, given the present circumstances. 

Once he's sure she's done talking, Percy takes the pillow she's just put in its case and plops it against the arm of the couch. 

"You're welcome," he says, simply. "I've done my fair share of lashing out at people because I was getting hurt. Sometimes it's like you're so angry, there's nowhere else for it to go."

"And there's nothing else you can control," she finishes, with another pained smirk. "So you keep doing it, even when it starts destroying you and everyone you care about."

He's known she was a bully because she was _being_ bullied since he accidentally witnessed the latter, staying hidden around a corner in case the asshole decided to punish her for him being there. He just hadn't realized she was actually listening when he caught up to her afterwards. 

_("Your dad's hitting you, isn't he."_

_"You don't know anything, Prissy."_

_"I know a lot more than you think I do. Most importantly, that you don't deserve this. No one does.")_

He sits on the couch and pats the cushion on the other end. She steps forward, falters for a second, then kicks herself back into gear and takes a seat. 

"I'm not in the business of holding grudges." Percy picks up his now-lukewarm mug, but he doesn't drink from it. "It took guts, what you just said. I respect that." 

Shit. She's tearing up again. He puts his mug back down, and he's halfway to hugging her before he remembers who he's sitting with—

— but then she meets him there, her muscular arms surprisingly tentative around him. 

She could break him in half with one hand. He's seen enough of her wrestling meets to know that. For once, it seems like she's actively trying not to.

He squeezes until she lets herself squeeze back. It's a little hard to breathe, but that might also be the lump in his throat.

"Don't tell anyone." Pleading, exhausted, muffled in his shirt. "I can't— I can't let them see me like this."

She's trembling again. Those words could have come from his own mouth five years ago.

"I promise. Not a soul." 

Maybe tomorrow, he'll start working on convincing her to rely on the support system she's trying so hard to avoid. He remembers from experience that it often felt more like being a parasite, like he was infecting all of them with his garbage, and how difficult that one is to unlearn. 

Hell, he's still in the process himself. She won't be able to start until she has a sense of basic safety, so he leaves it aside for now.

"You're gonna be okay," he tells her instead, her choppy hair brushing against his ear. "Between my parents and I, we'll make sure of it."

"How can you—" She sits up, her expression going frantic, still clinging to his arm. "What if he shows up here? Shit, I didn't even think about— what if he— "

"Listen," Percy interrupts, dropping his voice into a sinister pitch as takes hold of her shoulders. "If that asswipe comes anywhere _near_ you, I'll punch his fucking lights out, okay? If I go at him from behind with a baseball bat, he won't even know what hit him." 

It's half past midnight, and Clarisse La Rue is in his living room, hugging him and sob-laughing into his shirt. Trusting him, when she feels like she can't trust anyone else. Believing him, when he says he'll defend her.

It's not the weirdest night he's ever had sneak up on him, but it's pretty close. 

—

In the morning, Percy makes blue waffles and chicken-apple sausage so that his mom, who wouldn't stop batch-cooking until last week, doesn't try to do it herself and end up aggravating her sciatica until she can't stand up at all. He's not as good as she is, but he's helped her do it a thousand times, and if Clarisse has any complaints about her breakfast, she's too busy wolfing it down to voice them.

She'd been a little queasy as she worked her way through the lasagna last night. Her appetite has come back with a vengeance, and it occurs to him that it might be because she hadn't eaten enough yesterday and it took a decent meal for her stomach to remember what hunger signals felt like.

Paul startles upon entering the kitchen and seeing her at the table, and he quickly goes thin-lipped with indignation when he takes in the bruise on her face and the way she's babying her hand. He pours them each a cup of coffee (besides Percy's mom, who already has a mug of fragrant, far-less-caffeinated green tea), grabs a pen and paper and pulls up a chair. 

They spend the rest of the day gathering information. Paul's been through it before as a mandatory reporter, and Percy and his mom have more than enough experience being on the other side. Eventually, after a call to a child law center and careful weighing of the options, they come to an agreement. 

Clarisse would prefer emancipation, but she doesn't have a job, thanks to her turd of a father blocking her from doing anything that might have given her an escape route. Since she can't support herself, it's easier if Percy's parents petition for guardianship instead, and that option's a hell of a lot better than throwing her at the mercy of the foster care system. 

"Keeping in mind that you'd be living with a brand-new infant," Paul adds as a caveat. "No one will sleep through the night and we'll all be covered in puke, drool and poop for at least six months, or possibly until the kid goes to college." 

"I'm looking forward to it, actually." Clarisse grins, kicking one foot up on the chair across from her. "Shi— I mean, poop happens. You wipe it off and keep going. And you have a cutie to play with afterwards." She goes a bit sheepish, rubbing at the back of her head. "I'll work on the swearing." 

Once their course of action is decided, the next step— much more uncomfortable— is gathering the evidence. 

Percy takes the photos, even though each one makes him want to hurl the camera at a wall. Stripped to her underwear, he can see dozens of bruises, ranging from the same violet as her cheek to blue-green and yellow-brown and every shade and combination in between. The overwhelming majority of them are hidden by her regular clothes, exactly the way his injuries had always been.

"My eyes are up here," she jokes, the humor falling flat, as Percy zeroes in on her rib—her whole side, really. It looks like she got thrown down a flight of stairs. 

Forget hurling it at a wall; he almost breaks the camera with his bare hands when he realizes that's actually a possibility.

"You said everything else was superficial." 

"It was weeks ago. You can't set a broken rib." 

Percy puts down the camera and runs a hand over his face. 

"Just because you can't set it doesn't mean it's _not_ _fucking_ _broken_."

That seems to hit her hard, as though she's never thought of it like that. She's managed to keep herself mostly composed today, and while her fists are clenched, she doesn't lose it. 

"Just because it's broken doesn't mean it'll stay that way." 

If he didn't know better, he might think she was trying to reassure him. It still works, and he isn't sure it matters whether that was the intended effect.

"I won't nag you about it, as long as you promise to tell one of us if it starts bothering you." 

Again, there's another layer to the conversation than the immediate one. She has to get it, or she wouldn't be looking back at him like that. 

"You'd sniff it out anyway." 

—

She's not the best roommate, and they still butt heads a lot— there's only so much two bullheaded, traumatized, ADHD teenagers can do to keep from locking horns when they disagree. 

She plays her music too loud and doesn't pick up her towels from the bathroom floor and generally leaves a trail of clutter in her wake. To be fair, he does all of that too, but having it happen twice as often is four times as annoying. Especially when his guilty conscience reminds him that this is what his mom has been subjected to pretty much since he was born. 

After they scuffle, once Clarisse has cooled off, he sees a completely different side of her. She's still too proud to say the words outright, but she comes back in from her walks mellowed and remorseful, usually with some kind of pastry or takeout as a peace offering. 

Sunday is weird and morose. She spends most of it texting, and she won't tell anyone why she keeps having to excuse herself and hole up in Percy's room, coming back out later with her face red in a way he's only just been allowed to see. 

He manages to compartmentalize enough to take Annabeth to the Met like they planned, but she can tell he's nervous— besides Grover and his mom and _maybe_ Jason Grace, she's the only person who can always do so, no matter how much he tries to laugh it off. 

She's waiting for him just inside the lobby, stunning in a white turtleneck sweater-dress, her flaxen curls spilling out from under her scarlet beret. She looks slightly annoyed, but he's half an hour late, so she kind of has a right to.

The desire to tell her everything is so strong his vision blacks out for a second. He knows it would make him feel better; she'd tell him not to be a hero, then contradict herself by kissing him and whispering _I'm proud of you_ against his lips. 

But he made a promise, and he can't do that to Clarisse.

"I can't name names, but a friend of mine got the shit kicked out of them and is staying at my place."

It's enough to tell her his state of mind while protecting Clarisse's privacy, but he still wishes he could hear Annabeth's input on the details. She'd be able to cut through all of the baggage; wouldn't bullshit him if she thought his chaotic emotions were clouding his judgment and making him overstep. 

"Is that why you didn't respond to my texts all weekend?" 

He can see her relax a little. She's got her own baggage, mostly related to fear of abandonment, but she puts in a lot of effort to negate those impulses, so he owes her a little slack in return.

"I'm sorry. I should have told you earlier; I just got distracted. It's—"

He cuts himself off before he starts spitting out identifying information. The marks he saw keep popping up in his mind's eye, incontrovertible proof that the abuse was vicious and pretty much constant, and had been for a long time.

"It's bad. I can't say any more than that."

She sighs, the annoyance swiftly replaced with something tender, and pulls him close.

He tries to focus on appreciating the warmth of her hands, the coconut-hibiscus fragrance of her conditioner, the pressure of her forehead as she leans it against his, the way his pulse flutters like a hummingbird every time he touches her.

"You have the biggest heart of anyone I know," she tells him, brushing her thumb over his cheek as he feels it going pink. "You were just being you. I should have figured that was all it was."

It puts him in a good enough state of mind that he can set everything else aside for a while and enjoy himself. 

When he gets home, Clarisse is doing a little better too, keeping busy by helping Paul assemble the new crib. She's still antsy, though, and by Monday morning she's vibrating out of her skin. 

She doesn't talk to him at school. They travel separately, because that way she doesn't have to explain why they're arriving together. He keeps his lips zipped too, so as not to blow her cover. 

How his friends don't notice how freaked out he feels, not knowing where she is and fretting that her father's waiting in the bushes for her to be alone or something, he doesn't have a clue. 

(Annabeth, however, keeps catching his gaze with her quicksilver eyes narrowed in concerned suspicion, which threatens the whole operation.)

If he thinks about it, the speed with which he started thinking of Clarisse as someone under his protection should have given him whiplash.

Rehearsal is awkward, with everyone staring at her and the group small enough that she can feel every single pair of eyes on her back. She gets more and more agitated every time, until she finally throws down her script and shoots a boiling-hot glare at the unfortunate Stoll brother she caught in the corner of her field of vision. 

"Take a picture, shithead. It'll last longer." 

She knocks over a chair and storms out of the auditorium. By the time they're done, he has a short text from her, letting him know she's already on the train. 

Thalia's subdued, and so is Fred, and even Mr. D isn't grousing too much. Jason noticed too, his handsome features drawn with worry, and Silena and Beckendorf and Chris are all huddled together on their own, exchanging hushed whispers. 

Percy wants to explain it, but maybe he doesn't have to. 

Annabeth walks him to the train like usual, her gloved hand loosely twined with his. They're a block or so down the sidewalk when there's a shout from behind, and a moment later Chris catches up to them. 

"I saw the way she looked at you." 

It's all he needs to say. 

Annabeth squeezes reassuringly. Percy can tell the cogs are working in her brilliant mind, from the expression on her face. 

He breathes out, heavy from the day's drama. 

"I promised her I wouldn't say anything." 

"We were supposed to see a movie on Sunday. She wouldn't tell me why she canceled." Chris is shaking slightly, the anxiety obvious in the way he's holding himself. "Is she in trouble?"

"Not if I have anything to say about it." 

Percy doesn't know the guy well, but he gets it. He'd feel the same way if Annabeth showed up at school with a braced wrist and black eye, and refused to explain where they came from or why she skipped out on an important date. "I can't make any promises, but I'll try to get her to call you." 

It's enough. It has to be enough. Chris is silent for a few beats, then smiles weakly at him. 

"You're a good friend, Percy." 

He grips Percy's arm once, then sets off for the bus stop. Annabeth waits until he's gone before she catches Percy by the elbow. 

"It's Clarisse, isn't it." 

Shit. 

She's too sharp to fall for it, even if he'd done it perfectly. He should have known she'd see right through him. 

"I guess the additional context makes it pretty obvious."

"I'm not going to say anything." She slides an assuring hand down his sleeve so she can hold onto his again. "But she can't keep it a secret forever. She's literally wearing it on her face." 

"I can't make any promises," Percy repeats, smirking humorlessly, "but I'll do my damndest." 

He can feel her heat through the knitwear. His mom made both pairs, his of course in cobalt blue, hers in heather gray. It keeps him going until they split off, at which point the rest of the day comes roaring back. 

Clarisse will be home by now, and his mom will be consoling her, and he tries to hold onto that thought as he gets on the elevator to the apartment. 

It's going to be a tough road. She's raw and wounded and still constantly pumped full of adrenaline, still struggling to convince herself she isn't in danger, still liable to snap when it doesn't work.

But that's actually a good thing, once he thinks about it. She's _showing_ that she's struggling, and it's because she knows she can, that it's not going to get her battered or worse. She keeps trying, no matter how many landmines she trips. That has to count for something.

Shit happens. You wipe it off and keep going.

—

**Author's Note:**

> I may or may not have accidentally made myself ship Percy/Clarisse doing this. Whoops. 8D
> 
> I hope you're all keeping on keeping on. I promise I'll start talking to humans again soon. Hopefully. Knock on wood.


End file.
